Hello America,
My name is Tony Whitcomb and I am the Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I have created Expotera, as well as this Blog, to let the good, honest and hardworking Citizens of this Country know that the Revolution has now begun.
Power To The People!!

Thursday, July 31, 2014

Words fail; ordinary terms are inadequate to describe the horrors
Israel daily perpetrates, and has perpetrated for years, against the
Palestinians.

The tragedy of Gaza has been described a hundred times over, as
have the tragedies of 1948, of Qibya, of Sabra and Shatila, of Jenin
-- 60 years of atrocity perpetrated in the name of Judaism.

But the horror generally falls on deaf ears in most of Israel,
in the U.S. political arena, in the mainstream U.S. media.

Those who are horrified -- and there are many -- cannot penetrate
the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite
in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada
and Europe, from seeing, from caring.

But it needs to be said now, loudly:

Those who devise and carry out Israeli policies have made Israel
into a monster, and it has come time for all of us -- all Israelis, all
Jews who allow Israel to speak for them, all Americans who do
nothing to end U.S. support for Israel and its murderous policies --
to recognize that we stain ourselves morally by continuing to sit by
while Israel carries out its atrocities against the Palestinians.

A nation that mandates the primacy of one ethnicity or religion
over all others will eventually become psychologically
dysfunctional.

Narcissistically obsessed with its own image, it must strive to
maintain its racial superiority at all costs and will inevitably come
to view any resistance to this imagined superiority as an existential
threat.

Indeed, any other people automatically becomes an existential threat simply by virtue of its own existence.

As it seeks to protect itself against phantom threats, the racist
state becomes increasingly paranoid, its society closed and insular,
intellectually limited.

Setbacks enrage it; humiliations madden it.

The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense
of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.

The pattern played out in Nazi Germany as it sought to
maintain a mythical Aryan superiority.

It is playing out now in Israel.

“This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or
moral,” wrote Israeli intellectual and anti-Zionist activist Michel
Warschawski in his 2004 book Towards an Open Tomb: The Crisis
of Israeli Society.

Israel knows no limits and is lashing out as it finds that its attempt
to beat the Palestinians into submission and swallow Palestine
whole is being thwarted by a resilient, dignified Palestinian people
who refuse to submit quietly and give up resisting Israel’s
arrogance.

We in the United States have become inured to tragedy inflicted by
Israel, and we easily fall for the spin that automatically, by some
trick of the imagination, converts Israeli atrocities to examples of
how Israel is victimized.

But a military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a
residential apartment building in the middle of the night and kills
14 sleeping civilians, as happened in Gaza four years ago, is not
a military that operates by civilized rules.

A military establishment that drops a 500-pound bomb on a house
in the middle of the night and kills a man and his wife and seven
of their children, as happened in Gaza four days ago, is not the
military of a moral country.

A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a 13-year-old girl on the claim that she threatened
soldiers at a military post -- one of nearly 700 Palestinian children
murdered by Israelis since the intifada began -- is not a society with
a conscience.

A government that imprisons a 15-year-old girl -- one of several
hundred children in Israeli detention -- for the crime of pushing
and running away from a male soldier trying to do a body search
as she entered a mosque is not a government with any moral bearings.

This story, not the kind that ever appears in the U.S. media,
was reported in the London Sunday Times.

The girl was shot three times as she ran away and was convicted
to 18 months in prison after she came out of a coma.

Critics of Israel note increasingly that Israel is self-destructing, nearing a catastrophe of its own making.

Michel Warschawski writes of an “Israeli madness” and “insane
brutality,” a “putrefaction” of civilized society, that have set
Israel on a suicidal course.

He foresees the end of the Zionist enterprise; Israel is a “gang of hoodlums,” he says, a state “that makes a mockery of legality and
of civil morality. A state run in contempt of justice loses the
strength to survive.”

As Warschawski notes bitterly, Israel no longer knows any moral
boundaries -- if it ever did.

Those who continue to support Israel, who make excuses for it
as it descends into corruption, have lost their moral compass.

Kathleen Christison is a Former CIA Political Analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Homes, schools, hospitals and entire families are targeted
for destruction.

Chaos By Design

At the center of chaos, the wild-eyed President Obama strikes
blindly, oblivious of the consequences, willing to risk a financial
debacle or a nuclear war.

He enforces sanctions against Iran; imposes sanctions on Russia;
sets up missile bases five launch minutes from Moscow; sends killer
drones against Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan; arms mercenaries
in Syria; trains and equips Kurds in Iraq and pays for Israel’s
savagery against Gaza.

Nothing works.

The Chaos President is blind to the fact that starving one’s
adversaries does not secure submission: it unites them to
resist.

Regime change, imposing proxies by force and subterfuge, can
destroy the social fabric of complex societies: Million of peasants
and workers become uprooted refugees.

Popular social movements are replaced by organized criminal gangs
and bandit armies.

Central America, the product of decades of US direct and proxy
military interventions, which prevented the most basic structural
changes, has become a chaotic, unlivable inferno for millions.

Tens of thousands of children flee from their ‘free market’- induced
mass poverty and militarized state and gangster violence.

Children refugees at the US border are arrested in mass, and
imprisoned in makeshift detention camps, subject to psychological,
physical and sexual abuse by officials and guards on the inside.

On the outside, these pitiful children are exposed to the racist
hatred of a frightened US public unaware of the dangers these
children are escaping and the US government’s role in creating
these hells.

The US-backed Kiev aviation authorities re-directed international
passenger airlines to fly over war zones bristling with anti-aircraft
missiles while Kiev’s jets bombed the rebellious cities and towns.

One flight was shot down and nearly 300 civilians perished.

Immediately an explosion of accusations from Kiev blaming Russian
President Putin flooded Western media with no real facts to explain
the tragedy/crime.

War-crazy President Obama and the slavering prime ministers of
the EU ejaculated ultimatums, threatening to convert Russia into
a pariah state. ‘Sanctions, sanctions, everywhere . . . but first…
France must complete its $1.5 billion sale to the Russian navy.’

And the City of London exempts the Russian oligarchs from the
‘sanctions’, embedded as they are in London’s money-laundering,
parasitical FIRE (Fire, Insurance and Real Estate) economy.

The Cold War has returned and has taken an ugly turn... with
exceptions…for business.

Confrontation among nuclear powers is imminent:

And the maniacal Baltic States and Poland bray the loudest for
war with Russia, oblivious to their positions on the front lines of
incineration...

Each day Israel’s war machine chews up more bodies of Gaza’s
children while spitting out more lies.

Cheering Israeli Jews perch on their fortified hills to celebrate
each missile strike on the apartments and schools in the densely
populated Shejaiya neighborhood of besieged Gaza.

A group of orthodox and secular entrepreneurs in Brooklyn have
organized group tours to visit the Holy Sites by day and enjoy the
Gaza pyrotechnics by night . . . night goggles to view the fleeing
mothers and burning children are available at a small extra charge…

Again the US Senate votes unanimously in support of Israel’s latest campaign of mass murder – no crime is depraved enough to ruffle
the scruples of America’s leaders.

They hew close to a script from the 52 Presidents of the Major
American Jewish Organizations.

Together they embrace a Beast from the Apocalypse gnawing
on the flesh and bones of Palestine.

Demonstrators supporting the Gazan resistance are gassed and
assaulted by special riot police – ‘Socialist’ Hollande serves the
demands of powerful Zionist organizations while trashing his
country’s republican traditions and its sacred ‘Rights of Man’.

The young protestors of Paris fought back with barricades and
paving stones in the finest traditions of the Paris Commune waving
the flags of a free Palestine.

Not a single ‘red banner’ was in sight: The French ‘left’
were under their beds or off on vacation.

There are ominous signs away from the killing fields.

The stock market is rising while the economy stagnates.

Wild speculators have returned in their splendor widening the gap
between the fictitious and real economy before the ‘deluge’, the
chaos of another inevitable crash.

In industrial America’s once great Detroit, clean water is shut-off to tens of thousands of poor citizens unable to pay for basic services.

In the midst of summer, urban families are left to defecate in
hallways, alleyways and empty lots.

Without water the toilets are clogged, children are not washed.

Roscoe, the master plumber, says the job is way beyond him.

According to our famed economists, the economy of Detroit is
‘recovering . . . profits are up, it’s only the people who are
suffering.’

Productivity has doubled, speculators are satisfied; pensions are
slashed and wages are down; but the Detroit Tigers are in first place.

Public hospitals everywhere are being closed.

In the Bronx and Brooklyn, emergency rooms are overwhelmed.

Chaos!

Interns work 36 hour shifts . . . and the sick and injured take
their chances with a sleep-deprived medic.

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, private clinics and ‘boutique’ practices
for the elite proliferate.

Scandinavians have embraced the putschist power grab in Kiev.

The Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt bellows for a new Cold War
with Russia.

The Danish emissary and NATO leader, Rasmussen, salivates
obscenely at the prospect of bombing and destroying Syria in
a replay of NATO’s ‘victory’ over Libya.

The German leaders endorse the ongoing Israeli genocide against
Gaza; they are comfortably protected from any moral conscience
by their nostalgic blanket of ‘guilt’ over Nazi crimes 70 years ago.

Your adversaries are finding common ground, trading, forging
agreements, building defenses; their ties are growing stronger.

Chaos reigns in Israel.

War-obsessed Israelis discover that the Chosen People of God can
also bleed and die, lose limbs and eyes in the alleyways of Gaza
where poorly armed boys and men stand their ground.

When the cheers turn to jeers, will they re-elect Bibi,
their current kosher butcher?

The overseas brethren, the fundraisers, the lobbyists and the
armchair verbal assassins will automatically embrace some new
face, without questions, regrets or (god forbid!) self-criticism
–if it’s ‘good for Israel and the Jews’ it’s got to be right!

If Argentina rejects this financial blackmail and defaults, shock
waves will ripple throughout global financial markets.

Creditors will tremble in uncertainty: Fears will grow over a new financial crash.

Will they squeeze out another trillion-dollar bailout?

But where’s the money?

Printing presses are working day and night.

There are only a few life boats . . . enough for the bankers and Wall Street, the other ninety-nine percent will have to swim or feed the
sharks.

The corrupted financial press now advises warlords on which
country to bomb and politicians on how to impose economic
sanctions; they no longer provide sound economic information
or advise investors on markets.

Their editorial rants will incite an investor flight to buy king-sized mattresses for stuffing as the banks fail.

The US President is on the verge of a mental breakdown:

He’s a liar of Munchausen proportions with a bad case of political
paranoia, war hysteria and megalomania.

He’s gone amok, braying, ‘I lead the world: its US leadership or
chaos’. Increasingly the world has another message: ‘It’s the US
and chaos.’

Wall Street is abandoning him. The Russians have double-crossed
him.

The Chinese merchants are now doing business everywhere we
used to be and we ought to be.

They’re playing with loaded dice.

The stubborn Somalis refuse to submit to a Black President: they
reject this ‘ML King with drones’ . . . The Germans suck on their
thumbs in total stupor as Americans monitor and record their every
conversation…for their own safety!

“Our corporations are ingrates after all we have done for them”,
the First Black President whines. “They flee from our taxes while
we subsidize their operations!”

Final Solutions: The End of Chaos

The only solution is to move on: Chaos breeds chaos.

The President strives to project his ‘Leadership’.

He asks his close advisers very hard questions:

“Why can’t we bomb Russia, just like Israel bombs Gaza?

Why don’t we build an ‘Iron Dome’ over Europe and shoot
down Russian nuclear missiles while we fire upon Moscow
from our new bases in Ukraine?

Which countries will our ‘Dome’ protect?

I am sure that the people of East Europe and the Baltic States
will gladly make the supreme sacrifice.

After all, their leaders were at the very front frothing for a
war with Russia.

Their reward, a nuclear wasteland, will be a small price to
ensure our success!”

The Zionist lobby will insist our ‘Iron Dome’ covers Israel.

But the Saudis may try to bribe the Russians to spare the oil fields
as Moscow targets the US missile bases near Mecca.

Our radio-active allies in the Middle East will just have to relocate
to a new Holy Land.

Do Obama and his advisers imagine reducing the Asian population
by a billion or two?

Do they plan several hundred Hiroshimas because the Chinese
crossed the President’s ‘red lines’:

Monday, July 28, 2014

Israel claims its latest slaughter of Gazans is justified as self-
defense because some militants are firing poorly aimed rockets
into Israel.

But that leaves out the moral context of Israel’s seizure of
Palestinian land and its harsh blockade of the 1.7 million people
locked in the tiny Gaza Strip, says Theologian Daniel C. Maguire.

By Daniel C. Maguire
Consortiumnews.com
July 24, 2014

Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?

Though it is hard for a question to be wrong, this is a dead wrong
question even though it is the heart and soul of Israel’s defense of
its attack on little Gaza.

It is also the basis of the U.S. assessment of the ongoing moral
disaster.

The Senate voted unanimously to answer the question in the
affirmative while ignoring all other piercingly relevant
circumstances.

Never has a misplaced question had such prestige and high-level
cachet.

The contorted question sins by deviousness and legerdemain.

With verbal wizardry, offense suddenly becomes defense with all
the legitimacy that defense imports.

It is akin to asking “Does a rapist during a rape have a right to
defend himself if the victim resists?”

With collective amnesia, Israel and the United States brush aside
basic realities of warfare.

Siege (or blockade) is an act of offensive warfare.

Indeed it is among the most devastating of weapons, condemned by
both “Just War” theory and — very much to the point — by Jewish
and Christian ethics of war.

Maimonides in the Twelfth Century summed up the Talmudic view
of siege, saying it could only be justified if it left one side open for
citizens to escape.

Of course, it would then no longer be a siege. Conclusion: a siege
is immoral.

As Michael Walzer says in his treatment of “War Against Civilians,”
“more people died in the siege of Leningrad than in the infernos of
Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki taken together.”

The health effects of the long-term and ever-tightening siege
on children and others in Gaza are horrific.

The people of Gaza are equivalently on death row since the
current Israeli attack will tighten the siege.

Flotillas have attempted to break the siege of Gaza by bringing
desperately needed medicine and food and they have been
repulsed by Israel; in one case Israelis shot and killed nine of
those on a peace flotilla, one of them an American citizen.

Now back to the question that undergirds Israeli and American
feeble rationalizations: does the besieger have a right to defend
itself from its victim during the siege?

Does not the right of the besieged to end the siege trump the
claims of the fourth strongest military force in the world, which is
suffocating 1.7 million people imprisoned in the narrow confines of
Gaza?

The unambiguous fact on the ground is that the people of Gaza
are indeed on a form of death row.

With Israel on one side and the hostile and powerful Egypt on the
other, with the tunnels which were economic lifelines (and not just
conduits for defensive weapons) being destroyed, the siege has
become catastrophic.

The Parity Lie

There are other lies huddled beneath the misplaced question:
Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?

Prominent among them, and dominating American mainstream
media, is the parity lie.

The implication is that we have here a war between equal parties.

But Gaza has no army, no navy, no air force, not even an airfield.

Like some blind David it is senselessly and desperately hurling
unguidable pebbles at the Israeli Goliath, thus giving Israel the
excuse to claim victimhood and trot out its fraudulent question
to cover over its ongoing crimes against humanity.

Lies beget lies and there are more.

As Lebanese-American philosopher Robert Ashmore points out,
Israel and the United States with studied and stubborn effort
turn their backs on the original sin of the Mideast, the reason
why Gaza is the overcrowded prison it is.

What Israelis call “The War of Independence,” and the Arabs with
more accuracy call al Nakba, the catastrophe, happened in 1948.

Over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, over
500 of their villages destroyed and rebuilt with Hebrew names.

That is the root of all Israeli evil.

It continues apace as Israel rejects repeated Arab offers
to recognize Israel if it retreats to the pre-1967 borders.

Land-theft euphemized as “settlements” continue to gobble up
Palestinian land, making all talk of a “two-state” solution a cynical
illusion.

The United States is, as Tony Judt put it, “the paymaster”
for Israeli imperialism.

The U.S. Congress is, as Robert Ashmore says, “Israeli occupied
territory.”

The al-Qaeda leaders behind the 9/11 attacks cited the relentless
U.S. support of Israeli occupation as a motive for the attack.

It is in our national interest to remember that.

Resentment of Israeli aggression and our lapdog
complicity is at high peak.

In the age of suitcase-size atomic weapons, drones and chemical-
biological micro-weapons, it is suicidal folly to press on as Israel’s
enabler-in-chief. Did 9/11 teach us nothing!

And the biggest crimes of all are war crimes, since they kill en
masse and showcase the cruelest form of human behavior.

The fact that Israel is actively committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip is not open to debate, since a cursory glance at the conflict obviously exposes them in practice.

The two most glaring war crimes Israel is committing – as defined
by the Geneva Convention – are the concepts of “collective
punishment” and “necessity and proportionality.”

Under collective punishment, a warring party cannot respond to an
attack by waging war on the attacker’s community, as is clearly
happening in Gaza.

The clearest proof that collective punishment is being used is that
a 1,000 Gaza homes have been destroyed and the majority of the
casualties are civilians.

Under “necessity and proportionality” a warring party must only
use the amount of force necessary to defeat the opponent;
disproportional force is a crime.

So, for example, if Hamas fires wimpy rockets that kill virtually no
Israelis, then it is “disproportionate” for Israel to rain massive
bombs, missiles, and artillery to reduce large sections of Gaza to
rubble.

Even Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called the Israel
attack a “deliberately disproportionate form of collective
punishment.”

It is also a specific war crime to deliberately attack civilians,
and especially to attack facilities treating the wounded.

But Israel has attacked al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza four times,
according to Reuters.

The latest shelling of al-Aqsa killed 4 and wounded 70.

Even the pro-western Human Rights Watch has denounced Israel
for committing war crimes:

“Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch
have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians
in violation of the laws of war.”

Obama’s aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes is also closed
to debate, since his administration stands guilty from the very
beginning of the conflict by shielding Israel from international
political pressure, hiding its war crimes by deliberate
misrepresenting what is happening, and giving political space
for the war to continue by not intervening directly.

It was a blatantly laughable lie when Obama said that his
government was “using all means” to achieve a ceasefire
early in the conflict.

The U.S. influence over Israel is tremendous, and Obama could have
ended the conflict in the first hour by simply declaring, “If Israel
does not stop its attack on Gaza, the US will refuse further military
and financial assistance and sever all diplomatic and political ties.”

War over.

Instead of taking this action, or any action for that matter,
Obama sat on the sidelines.

In fact, Obama deliberately waited until the end of the second
week of the war to even send his Secretary of State, John Kerry,
to broker a ceasefire deal.

Of course, Obama could have come himself.

Obama further assisted in Israeli war crimes by repeatedly
justifying Israel’s right to commit them, deceitfully placing
all Israel’s actions under the big umbrella of “self-defense.”

Again, war crimes are war crimes, and were purposefully
created to trump any excuse of self-defense.

After ten days of a brutal bombing campaign an Israeli ground
invasion was announced, which everyone knew would intensify
the bloodshed.

This would have been a key moment for the US government
to finally intervene.

But instead, as ABC News reports:

“President Barack Obama said Friday that he encouraged Israel’s
leader to minimize civilian deaths in its ground push into Hamas-
ruled Gaza, while letting him know that the US supports Israel’s
right to self defense.”

A statement like this can be interpreted to mean only one thing:
a green light to continue the massacre.

When John Kerry was finally sent to the Middle East to broker a
peace deal, he was still making excuses for Israeli’s war crimes.

USA Today reports:

“Kerry also blamed the latest wave of violence on what he called
Israel’s “legitimate” efforts to pursue and punish those who last
month kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers whose bodies
were found in the West Bank.”

Again, bombing a whole city because three Israeli teens were
killed is disproportional collective punishment – war crimes.

There is also no evidence that Hamas is responsible for the death
of three Israeli teens, which it has denied since day one.

The colossally disproportionate aspect of the war has been
continually smoothed over by the Obama administration, which
consistently lumps Palestinian and Israeli civilian deaths evenly
together, as if they were happening with equal frequency.

But in reality the 550 Palestinians that have been killed and 3,500
wounded are mostly civilians, while the few dozen Israeli’s who’ve
died have been mostly soldiers.

“Hamas also fired 50 more rockets at Israel, including
two at Tel Aviv, causing no injuries or damage.”

This has been the story of the conflict which Obama has justified
the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip by continually saying
“no nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders.”

Obama’s muted language about Israel’s aggression can be compared
to the recently shot down Malaysian jet, for which Obama
summoned his “outrage” while instantly blaming the pro-Russian
Ukrainians, though without a shred of evidence.

Most of the world believes Israel’s actions are outrageous, an
opinion not allowed to be expressed at the United Nations, thanks
again to the Obama administration, which used its clout to sterilize
Israel’s actions by limiting the UN’s statement on the conflict.

Specifically, the Obama administration used its influence over the
UN Security Council to limit its statement to “serious concern”
about civilian casualties on “both sides” of the conflict, thus white
washing the nature of events and providing the aggressor with
invaluable political breathing space.

The Obama administration has also assisted Israeli War Crimes
by continually blaming Hamas for not agreeing to the Egyptian
brokered ceasefire agreement.

Hamas is the elected government of the Gaza Strip, and thus
has a right to not agree to a ceasefire agreement.

But of course Hamas’ not agreeing to the Egyptian agreement
does not justify a continual Israeli blitzkrieg of the Gaza Strip,
though the Obama administration’s logic implies exactly this.

Lastly, the Obama administration has consistently lied about
the origins of this bloodbath.

The three dead Israeli teens were not the cause of this conflict, but
the pretext, which the Israeli government consciously exploited to
promote war among the Israeli population.

The real cause of the war was the recent alliance between the
Palestinian Authority – which governs the West Bank – and Hamas,
which governs the Gaza Strip.

This alliance gave the Palestinians their strongest hand in
bargaining with Israel in perhaps decades, which was enough
to spark a new round of massacres from the Israeli government
in an effort to re-balance the bargaining table.

This ongoing bloody dynamic continues in large part because
the US government allows it.

The vast majority of people across the world are denouncing
Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians, and so too must US
citizens denounce their government’s criminal actions in assisting
Israeli war crimes.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Whenever the Israeli army drafts the reserves — which are made up
of ex-soldiers — there are dissenters, resisters, and AWOLers among
the troops called to war.

Now that Israel has sent troops to Gaza again and reserves are
being summoned to service, dozens are refusing to take part.

We are more than 50 Israelis who were once soldiers
and now declare our refusal to be part of the reserves.

We oppose the Israeli Army and the conscription law.

Partly, that’s because we revile the current military operation.

But most of the signers below are women and would not have
fought in combat.

For us, the army is flawed for reasons far broader than “Operation
Protective Edge,” or even the occupation.

We rue the militarization of Israel and the army’s discriminatory
policies.

One example is the way women are often relegated to low-ranking
secretarial positions.

Another is the screening system that discriminates against Mizrachi
(Jews whose families originate in Arab countries) by keeping them
from being fairly represented inside the army’s most prestigious
units.

In Israeli society, one’s unit and position determines much of
one’s professional path in the civilian afterlife.

To us, the current military operation and the way militarization
affects Israeli society are inseparable.

In Israel, war is not merely politics by other means — it replaces
politics.

Israel is no longer able to think about a solution to a political
conflict except in terms of physical might; no wonder it is
prone to never-ending cycles of mortal violence.

And when the cannons fire, no criticism may be heard.

This petition, long in the making, has a special urgency because
of the brutal military operation now taking place in our name.

And although combat soldiers are generally the ones prosecuting
today’s war, their work would not be possible without the many
administrative roles in which most of us served.

So if there is a reason to oppose combat operations in Gaza, there
is also a reason to oppose the Israeli military apparatus as a whole.

That is the message of this petition:

We were soldiers in a wide variety of units and positions in the
Israeli military—a fact we now regret, because, in our service, we
found that troops who operate in the occupied territories aren’t
the only ones enforcing the mechanisms of control over Palestinian
lives.

In truth, the entire military is implicated.

For that reason, we now refuse to participate in our reserve duties,
and we support all those who resist being called to service.

The Israeli Army, a fundamental part of Israelis’ lives, is also the power that rules over the Palestinians living in the territories
occupied in 1967.

As long as it exists in its current structure, its language and mindset control us: We divide the world into good and evil according to the
military’s categories; the military serves as the leading authority
on who is valued more and who less in society — who is more
responsible for the occupation, who is allowed to vocalize their
resistance to it and who isn’t, and how they are allowed to do it.

The military plays a central role in every action plan and proposal discussed in the national conversation, which explains the absence
of any real argument about non-military solutions to the conflicts
Israel has been locked in with its neighbors.

The Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
are deprived of civil rights and human rights.

They live under a different legal system from their Jewish
neighbors.

This is not exclusively the fault of soldiers who operate in
these territories.

Those troops are, therefore, not the only ones obligated
to refuse.

Many of us served in logistical and bureaucratic support roles;
there, we found that the entire military helps implement the
oppression of the Palestinians.

Many soldiers who serve in non-combat roles decline to resist
because they believe their actions, often routine and banal,
are remote from the violent results elsewhere.

And actions that aren’t banal — for example, decisions about the
life or death of Palestinians made in offices many kilometers away
from the West Bank — are classified, and so it’s difficult to have a
public debate about them.

Unfortunately, we did not always refuse to perform the tasks we
were charged with, and in that way we, too, contributed to the
violent actions of the military.

During our time in the army, we witnessed (or participated in) the
military’s discriminatory behavior: the structural discrimination
against women, which begins with the initial screening and
assignment of roles; the sexual harassment that was a daily reality
for some of us; the immigration absorption centers that depend on
uniformed military assistance.

Some of us also saw firsthand how the bureaucracy deliberately
funnels technical students into technical positions, without giving
them the opportunity to serve in other roles.

We were placed into training courses among people who looked
and sounded like us, rather than the mixing and socializing that
the army claims to do.

The military tries to present itself as an institution that enables
social mobility — a stepping-stone into Israeli society.

In reality, it perpetuates segregation.

We believe it is not accidental that those who come from middle-
and high- income families land in elite intelligence units, and from
there often go to work for high-paying technology companies.

We think it is not accidental that when soldiers from a firearm
maintenance or quartermaster unit desert or leave the military,
often driven by the need to financially support their families, they
are called “draft-dodgers.”

The military enshrines an image of the “good Israeli,” who in
reality derives his power by subjugating others.

The central place of the military in Israeli society, and this ideal image it creates, work together to erase the cultures and struggles
of the Mizrachi, Ethiopians, Palestinians, Russians, Druze, the Ultra-
Orthodox, Bedouins, and women.

We all participated, on one level or another, in this ideology and
took part in the game of “the good Israeli” that serves the military
loyally.

Mostly our service did advance our positions in universities and
the labor market.

We made connections and benefited from the warm embrace of
the Israeli consensus.

But for the above reasons, these benefits were not worth the costs.

By law, some of us are still registered as part of the reserved forces (others have managed to win exemptions or have been granted
them upon their release), and the military keeps our names and
personal information, as well as the legal option to order us to
“service.”

But we will not participate — in any way.

There are many reasons people refuse to serve in the Israeli Army.

Even we have differences in background and motivation about why
we’ve written this letter.

Nevertheless, against attacks on those who resist conscription, we
support the resisters: the high school students who wrote a refusal
declaration letter, the Ultra orthodox protesting the new
conscription law, the Druze refusers, and all those whose
conscience, personal situation, or economic well-being do not allow
them to serve.

Under the guise of a conversation about equality, these people are
forced to pay the price. No more.

Yael Even Or

Efrat Even Tzur

Tal Aberman

Klil Agassi

Ofri Ilany

Eran Efrati

Dalit Baum

Roi Basha

Liat Bolzman

Lior Ben-Eliahu

Peleg Bar-Sapir

Moran Barir

Yotam Gidron

Maya Guttman

Gal Gvili

Namer Golan

Nirith Ben Horin

Uri Gordon

Yonatan N. Gez

Bosmat Gal

Or Glicklich

Erez Garnai

Diana Dolev

Sharon Dolev

Ariel Handel

Shira Hertzanu

Erez Wohl

Imri Havivi

Gal Chen

Shir Cohen

Gal Katz

Menachem Livne

Amir Livne Bar-on

Gilad Liberman

Dafna Lichtman

Yael Meiry

Amit Meyer

Maya Michaeli

Orian Michaeli

Shira Makin

Chen Misgav

Naama Nagar

Inbal Sinai

Kela Sappir

Shachaf Polakow

Avner Fitterman

Tom Pessah

Nadav Frankovitz

Tamar Kedem

Amnon Keren

Eyal Rozenberg

Guy Ron-Gilboa

Noa Shauer

Avi Shavit

Jen Shuka

Chen Tamir

The petition for Israeli soldiers and reservists is located at
Lo-Meshartot.org

Yael Even Or is an Israeli journalist and activist who, during her service, evaluated candidates for the recruitment department of the Israeli army. She currently lives in New York City.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Please read and share this powerful letter by Mads Gilbert,
a Norwegian medical doctor who is in Gaza right now:

By Mads Gilbert MD
July 21, 2014

Dearest friends,

The last night was extreme. The "ground invasion" of Gaza
resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart,
bleeding, shivering, dying - all sorts of injured Palestinians,
all ages, all civilians, all innocent.

The heroes in the ambulances and in all of Gaza's hospitals are
working 12-24 hour shifts, grey from fatigue and inhuman workloads
(without payment all in Shifa for the last 4 months), they care,
triage, try to understand the incomprehensible chaos of bodies,
sizes, limbs, walking, not walking, breathing, not breathing,
bleeding, not bleeding humans.

HUMANS!

Now, once more treated like animals by "the most moral army
in the world" (sic!).

My respect for the wounded is endless, in their contained
determination in the midst of pain, agony and shock; my admiration
for the staff and volunteers is endless, my closeness to the
Palestinian "sumud" gives me strength, although in glimpses I just
want to scream, hold someone tight, cry, smell the skin and hair of
the warm child, covered in blood, protect ourselves in an endless
embrace - but we cannot afford that, nor can they.

Ashy grey faces - Oh NO!

Not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding, we still have
lakes of blood on the floor in the ER, piles of dripping, blood-soaked
bandages to clear out - oh - the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly
shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas
the leftovers from death - all taken away ... to be prepared again,
to be repeated all over.

More then 100 cases came to Shifa in the last 24 hrs.

Enough for a large well trained hospital with everything, but
here - almost nothing: no electricity, water, disposables, drugs,
OR-tables, instruments, monitors - all rusted and as if taken from
museums of yesterday's hospitals.

But they do not complain, these heroes. They get on with it,
like warriors, head on, enormously resolute.

And as I write these words to you, alone, on a bed, my tears flow,
the warm but useless tears of pain and grief, of anger and fear.

This is not happening!

An then, just now, the orchestra of the Israeli war-machine starts
its gruesome symphony again, just now: salvos of artillery from the
navy boats just down on the shores, the roaring F16, the sickening
drones (Arabic 'Zennanis', the hummers), and the cluttering
Apaches.

So much made in and paid by the US.

Mr. Obama - do you have a heart?

I invite you - spend one night - just one night - with us in Shifa. Disguised as a cleaner, maybe.

I am convinced, 100%, it would change history.

Nobody with a heart AND power could ever walk away from a
night in Shifa without being determined to end the slaughter of
the Palestinian people.

But the heartless and merciless have done their calculations
and planned another "dahyia" onslaught on Gaza.

The rivers of blood will keep running the coming night.

I can hear they have tuned their instruments of death.

Please. Do what you can. This, THIS cannot continue.

Mads Gilbert MD PhD
Professor and Clinical Head
Clinic of Emergency Medicine
University Hospital of North Norway

Israel's crimes against humanity, the slaughter of civilians, the
bombing of mosques and rehab centers, and the drumbeat of
propaganda that it is all the fault of the victims, the 260
Palestinians killed and 2600 wounded.

Even the UN says 70% of the victims are civilians, many of them
children. And now we have the "final solution".........

Israeli invasion of Gaza started at 3 PM, EST, July 17.

The assault on 1.8 million people whose water and electricity
supplies have largely been cut off by the Jewish war machine poses
propaganda problems for US corporate media which is infested with
Jews, from Wolf Blitzer and Ben Wedeman on CNN to Krauthammer
and Hannity [wannabee a Jew] on Fox.

The problem is: How To Defend The Indefensible.

Social media have created the problem for the Zionists.

Did you watch Huffington Post this morning?

A Jew not as slick as Blitzer was trying to articulate the sin
of Hamas that it has not surrendered to Israel.

He almost conceded that social media are creating a problem
for the pro-Israel propaganda circuit.

Go to radio and you get NPR, the biggest lineup of Jews in
the media.

Then you can go to print media: New York Times, Washington
Post.....all hard core Zionists proclaiming Hamas' fault.

In spite of that control, the ground invasion sending tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, naval armada, against a defenseless people
takes a lot of gall to justify.

So what did CNN and the others do: They simply switched to the
shooting down of a Malaysian air liner, a godsend for them.

Not that the air liner tragedy should not be mentioned but to put
the assault on 1.8 million people second and that too in one sided
journalism is a skill which "Jews in the news" are adept at.

And Zionist ingenuity at manufacturing justification for genocide
never ends: A story has been concocted that Hamas was coming
out of a hole in the ground, putting all of Israel in danger?

How many?

Three men and then the number grew to 8 and now it sounds
like a whole army of "terrorists."

So that's why "we" have launched 45,000 troops at Gaza!

Thank you social media: Through facebook twitter, and emailing
and web sites, we have made it difficult for the Zionists get away
with murder.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

American Christians standing up and fighting the Rothschild's
Central Bankers and the International Banking Cartel that
makes up the "Synagogue of Satan".

By B.l. Cozad Jr.
7 Timer
July 15, 2014

Over the objections of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton
helped create the nation's first centralized bank in 1791, the
Bank of the United States.

By 1822, the rechartered second Bank of the United States was
run by Nicholas Biddle, who boasted of having more personal
power than the President, as he set interest rates and reserve
requirements.

Biddle bought influence, paid to elect politicians and owned
newspapers which he used to sway voters during elections.

On JULY 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed the renewal of
the charter of Nicholas Biddle's Bank of the United States, stating:

"Some of powers and privileges possessed by the existing Bank are
unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive to the rights of the
States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people... It is easy to
conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might
flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men
irresponsible to the people...Their power would be great whenever
they might choose to exert it...to influence elections or control the
affairs of the nation. But if any private citizen or public functionary
should interpose to curtail its powers or prevent a renewal of its
privileges, it cannot be doubted that he would be made to feel its
influence..."

Andrew Jackson continued:

"Controlling our currency, receiving our more formidable and
dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy."

On September 18, 1833, President Andrew Jackson decided to
remove all Federal money out of Nicholas Biddle's Bank of the
United States:

"The Bank is thus converted into a vast electioneering engine, with
means to embroil the country in deadly feuds, and...extend its
corruption through all the ramifications of society...

The President would feel that he was...an accomplice in a
conspiracy against that Government... if he did not take every step
within his constitutional and legal power...to...putting an end to
these enormities...

Was it expected when the moneys of the United States were
directed to be placed in that Bank that they would be put under the
control of one man...?

This corporation now holds in its hands the happiness and prosperity
of the American people, it is high time to take the alarm.

If the despotism be already upon us and our only safety is in the
mercy of the despot...how necessary it is to shake it off...

One of the most serious objections to the Bank of the United States
is the power which it concentrates."

On December 3, 1833, in his 5th Annual Message, President
Andrew Jackson stated:

"This great and powerful institution had been actively engaged
in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers
by means of its money...

It being thus established by unquestionable proof that the Bank of
the United States was converted into a permanent electioneering
engine...

The efforts of the Bank to control public opinion, through
the distresses of some and the fears of others...

Through presses known to have been sustained by its money
it attempts by unfounded alarms to create a panic in all."

President Andrew Jackson, whose wife died right before he took
office, stated in a Protest message to the Senate, April 15, 1834:

"The Bank of the United States, a great moneyed monopoly, had
attempted to obtain a renewal of its charter by controlling the
elections of the people...to control public opinion and force the
Government to yield to its demands...

The only ambition I can feel is to acquit myself to Him to whom
I must soon render an account of my stewardship...to persuade
my countrymen, so far as I may, that it is not in a...government
supported by powerful monopolies...that they will find
happiness...but in a plain system, void of pomp, protecting all
and granting favors to none, dispensing its blessings, like the
dews of Heaven."

On December 1, 1834, in his 6th Annual Message, President
Andrew Jackson stated:

"Events have satisfied my mind, and I think the minds of the
American people, that the mischief and dangers which flow
from a national Bank far overbalance all its advantages.

The bold effort the present Bank has made to control the
Government, the distresses it has wantonly produced, the violence
of which it has been the occasion in one of our cities famed for its
observance of law and order, are but premonitions of the fate
which awaits the American people should they be deluded into a
perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like
it."

On January 30, 1835, in the midst of the "Bank War," President
Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt when a bearded
man, Richard Lawrence, fired two pistols at him at point blank
range.

For some reason the guns misfired. Davy Crockett, who was with
the President, wrestled the assailant down and disarmed him.

When King William IV of England heard of the incident, he wrote
expressing his concern. President Jackson wrote back:

"A kind of Providence had been pleased to shield me against the
recent attempt upon my life, and irresistibly carried many minds
to the belief in a superintending Providence."

On December 7, 1835, in his 7th Annual Message, President
Andrew Jackson stated:

"We have felt but one class of these dangers exhibited in
the contest waged by the Bank of the United States...

The Bank is, in fact, but one of the fruits of a system at war with
the genius of all our institutions,...whose great ultimate object and
inevitable result...is the consolidation of all power in our system in
one central government.

Lavish public disbursements and corporations with exclusive
privileges would be its substitutes for the original...checks and
balances of the Constitution...

Wherever this spirit has effected an alliance with political power,
tyranny and despotism have been the fruit...It has to be incessantly
watched, or it corrupts...

All history tells us that a free people should be watchful of
delegated power, and should never acquiesce in a practice
which will diminish their control over it."

On December 5, 1836, in his 8th Annual Message, President
Andrew Jackson stated:

"It was in view of these evils, together with the dangerous power
wielded by the Bank of the United States and its repugnance to our
Constitution, that I was induced to exert the power conferred upon
me by the American people to prevent the continuance of that
institution...

The lessons taught by the Bank of the United States cannot well
be lost upon the American people. They will take care never again
to place so tremendous a power in irresponsible hands."

On March 4, 1837, in his Farewell Address, President Jackson
stated:

"The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole
country when the Bank of the United States waged war upon the
people in order to compel them to submit to its demands cannot
yet be forgotten...

The Government would have passed from the hands of the many to
the hands of the few, and this organized money power from its
secret conclave would have dictated the choice of your highest
officers and compelled you to make peace or war, as best suited
their own wishes.

The forms of your Government might for a time have remained,
but its living spirit would have departed from it."

Jackson continued:

"The distress... inflicted on the people by the Bank are some of
the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving
to enlarge the authority of the Federal Government beyond the
limits fixed by the Constitution...

The power which moneyed interest can exercise, when
concentrated under a single head and with our present system of
currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by
the Bank of the United States...

The paper-money system and its natural associations - monopoly
and exclusive privileges - have already struck their root too deep
in the soil, and it will require all your efforts to check its further
growth and to eradicate the evil."

Andrew Jackson continued:

"The men who profit by the abuses and desire to perpetuate
them will continue to besiege the halls of legislation in the
General Government...and will seek by every artifice to mislead
and deceive the public servants...

You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad;
your strength and power are well known throughout the
civilized world...

It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from
corruption...and inordinate thirst for power - that factions
will be formed and liberty endangered.

It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may
assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves...

Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without
number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to
preserve it for the benefit of the human race.

May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations, make you
worthy of the favors He has bestowed, and enable you, with pure
hearts and hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to
the end of time, the great charge He has committed to your keeping."

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Honey bees, if provoked enough, will commit suicide by
stinging something that is perceived as a threat to their
hive.

For the individual bee, this seems like a really bad idea.

"I'm going to die to slightly annoy whatever this giant thing
is, in the hopes that it might help persuade it to go away!"

But for the colony as a whole, the approach is very helpful.

Some human beings do something equally weird.

Throughout history, there have been individuals who threw
themselves in harm's way and stood up against injustice in
the hopes of improving society as a whole, even though it
often meant they would personally be robbed, assaulted,
caged, tortured or killed.

From a purely selfish perspective, such action seems downright
stupid.

In contrast, a whole lot of people have the attitude of "lay low,
don't make waves, look out for yourself and avoid trouble."

In the short term, that obviously benefits the obedient, quiet individual.

However, somewhat paradoxically, when ALL the individuals do
that, ALL of the individuals can end up suffering a lot worse than
if they had been trouble-makers and rabble-rousers.

For example, the 40,000,000+ Chinese who died in Mao's collectivist
authoritarian "Great Leap Forward" (gack) would have been better
off if on day ONE they all told Mao to go have intercourse with himself.

From the short-term perspective of EACH individual, it wasn't
worth standing up to the big, bad machine.

But from the long-term perspective of all of them (especially in
retrospect), it was insanely stupid for them NOT to disobey and
resist from the beginning.

And the same could be said of the many millions of people who
have quietly cooperated with other tyrannical, murderous regimes.

So, while I'm all in favor of self-preservation, to all those people
who think that laying low and keeping quiet actually makes you
safe, try reading a history book.

Yes, to be among the first to stand in front of the monster can
be really damn hazardous.

About the only thing worse is to live in a society where NO ONE
dares to stand against the monster.

So, whatever choice you make, at least be totally honest with
yourself:

1) "I'm going to be a complacent chicken-shit and hope that OTHER
people will win freedom and prosperity for me at some point;" or

2) "I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees!"

Those who deserve the ultimate contempt are the cowards who
not only do nothing to improve the world, but who GLOAT over
the suffering of those who DO try to improve things.

"Ha ha, you didn't do what the cops told you, and look what
happened to you!"

How twisted does someone have to be to take pride in being
an obedient coward, and delight in seeing people with actual
integrity and principles being harmed?

Thursday, July 3, 2014

After a brief holiday last week, I returned to some heavy reading
courtesy of the federal government.

Some of the materials that I read were gratifying, and one was
terrifying.

In one week, the Supreme Court told the police that if they want to
examine the contents of our cellphones, whether at traffic stops or
serious crime scenes, they need to get a warrant.

The court told small-business owners that they needn’t pay for
government-mandated insurance policies that provide for abortions
for their employees, because the government is without authority
to command them to do so.

It told the president that he cannot wait until Saturday morning,
when the Senate is not in session, to appoint high-level officials
whose jobs require Senate confirmation, and then claim that they
do not require Senate confirmation because the Senate was in
recess.

And it told selfless parents who stay home to care for their disabled children that the government may not force them to join health-
care labor unions and pay union dues against their will.

Buried in these opinions was a legal memorandum sent to the
president on July 16, 2010, nearly four years ago, and released
last week, after two years of litigation aimed at obtaining it.

The Obama administration had successfully resisted the efforts of
The New York Times and others to induce a judge to order the
release of the memo by claiming that it contained state secrets.

The judge who reviewed the memo concluded that it was merely a
legal opinion, and yet she referred to herself as being in “Alice in
Wonderland”:

The laws are public, and the judicial opinions interpreting them
are public, so how could a legal opinion be secret?

Notwithstanding her dilemma, she accepted the government’s
absurd claims, and the Times appealed.

Then the government shot itself in the foot when it surreptitiously
released a portion of its secret memo to NBC News.

This infuriated the panel of federal appellate judges hearing the
Times’ appeal, and they ordered the entire memo released.

Either it is secret or it is not, the court thundered, and the
government, which is bound by the transparency commanded by
the First Amendment, cannot pick and choose which parts of its
work to reveal to its favorite reporters and which to conceal from
the rest of us.

Last week, the administration released the memo.

It consists of 40 highly blacked-out pages, the conclusion of which
is that the president can order the CIA to kill Americans who are
present in foreign countries and who, in the opinion of high-level
government officials, pose a threat to Americans and may be
difficult to arrest.

The memorandum acknowledges that it is unprecedented in its
scope and novel in its conclusion, and requires predicting what
courts will do if they review it. Lawyers often predict for their
clients what courts will do, and thus from their predictions,
extrapolate advice for their clients.

But history has recorded no memo before this one that has advised
a president in writing that he is free to kill an American who is not
engaging in violence.

The logic of the memorandum states that Americans overseas who
join organizations that promote acts of terror are the equivalent of
enemy soldiers in uniform in wartime.

It follows, the memo argues, that because Congress has authorized
the president to kill foreign terrorists when they are in foreign
lands, he can kill Americans there, as well.

Conveniently, the memorandum never mentions the Fifth
Amendment to the Constitution, which famously commands that if
the government wants the life, liberty or property of any person, it
can only do so via due process.

Due process requires a jury trial with its attendant constitutional
protections.

The only recognized exceptions to this requirement are the
individual and collective right to immediate self-defense.

Since natural rights trump all positive law, a cop can kill a bank
robber who is shooting at him, and soldiers can kill enemy soldiers
who are about to shoot at them.

At the root of the recognized exceptions to the requirement of
due process is the active violence of the perpetrator, such that
due process is impossible and such that the threat to life is clear,
present and immediate.

The persons killed pursuant to this secret memo were all
Americans.

One, Anwar al-Awlaki, the stated target of the memo, was not
engaged in combat or armed or on a battlefield when he was
killed; he did not wear the uniform of an enemy army, and he
was not engaged in active violence at the time of his murder.

He was in a car in the desert in Yemen driving to meet
his 16 year old American son.

He had been under continuous surveillance by 12 American and
four Yemeni intelligence agents for the 48 hours preceding his
murder by a CIA drone.

The drone that killed him was soon followed by drones
that killed his son and two other Americans.

This week marks the anniversary of America’s birth as a free
nation, when we fought a war against a tyrant and seceded
from his kingdom.

We thought we had banished tyranny from our shores.

We thought we had ratified a Constitution that would compel
the government to respect our natural rights.

We thought we had established a society based upon the rule
of law.

We were wrong.

We have gone from an inherited tyrant to an elected one.

I have never heard President Obama say this, but it seems logical
that if he thinks he can lawfully kill Americans abroad, he also
thinks he can kill us here.

Happy Fourth of July.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

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About Me

My name is Tony Whitcomb. I am a Social Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I created Expotera and this Blog, to teach Corporate America and our Government, a few basic lessons in Ethics, Honesty, Macro Economics and Social Justice.
Power To The People!!